Reliable Sources: What Happened With Keith?

Transcript:

DAVID SHUSTER: Keith was mesmerized and flattered beyond belief by the 250,000 people who signed the petition. And he and his new agents who he picked up for the last year felt that that had certain value. And that when MSNBC made it clear that, no, it does not have the value that you think it does, Keith and his team felt like, OK, let’s try to take this base of support, let’s try to take this loyal fan following, and let’s take it to a forum where I’ll have the kind of independence that I’ve always wanted, and I’ll be able to do the sort of reporting and analysis without having my wings clipped by NBC News.

HOWARD KURTZ: Independence, but he was being paid $30 million over four years. Did he want more money from MSNBC?

SHUSTER: Keith has never been about money, and he’s not somebody who’s sort of obsessed with it.

Regis Pay Cut = Philbin Quit?

Regis Philbin got so angry over a pay cut that he made the TV announcement to quit during his own show. Executives say the show has not been performing well. Newsoxy.com cites inside sources as saying Regis found out about the pay cut and immediately announced he is leaving the "Live With Regis and Kelly" show.

The talk show host made nearly $20 million a year, but his show has not been performing well and he takes a lot of time off.

Philbin did receive an offer from ABC, but he became angry, and announced on air that he would leave. Co-host Kelly Ripa found out 15 minutes before the two went on the air, and was reportedly "furious" with him because she felt he disrespected her.

Read more here.

Oprah’s ‘Family Secret’ Is Half-Sister

UPDATED: 12NOON

In a revelation worthy of her own show, Oprah Winfrey said on the air Monday that she has a half-sister.

According to a the Speakeasy blog by Joseph Barrett at wsj.com, the woman, identified as Patricia, was born in Milwaukee in 1963 and given up for adoption.

As an adult working two jobs to raise two children on her own, Patricia began looking for her birth mother in 2007.

Using a combination of official records and online sleuthing, Patricia and her children eventually unraveled the truth. “We realized that Oprah could be my sister,” Patricia said. But what to do?

She eventually met with Oprah’s niece, Alisha Hayes, who runs a restaurant called Pat’s Ribs Place in Milwaukee. Patricia bore a striking resemblance to Alisha’s mother, also named Pat, whose pictures were scattered around the restaurant’s walls.

A DNA test confirmed that they were related.

Patricia tried three times to reach Vernita Lee, Oprah’s mother, but Bernita refused to talk to her.

Patricia tried to keep the news quiet, fearing a media frenzy. She said she was worried about hurting Oprah, so she kept the secret.

Eventually, a family member told Winfrey just before she was to go on the air for a show in late October.

“I was like, what?” she said.

She called her mother, who reluctantly confirmed the truth.

Read more here.

Static on the Citadel Radio Dial

Executives who run public companies, and the directors who oversee them, are supposed to operate with the shareholders’ best interests at heart. If a capitalist society like ours is to function, that has to be a bedrock principle.

The reality, reports Gretchen Morgenson at nytimes.com, can be far different, as shareholders in Citadel Broadcasting, a radio broadcasting company that exited bankruptcy last June, say they are discovering. A majority of the company’s owners contend that they are being victimized by their board’s refusal to entertain a buyout offer from a competitor, Cumulus Media. They say they are worried that the Citadel directors’ inaction is intended to let an ineffective chief executive hang on to his job.

Citadel is the nation’s third-largest radio broadcasting company; it owns and operates 166 FM and 59 AM stations in more than 50 markets. Its Citadel Media unit provides radio programming for approximately 4,000 station affiliates. Only Clear Channel and CBS are bigger.

Citadel suffered during the recession when advertising revenues collapsed. But its woes were compounded by the high prices that its executives paid to buy stations when times were good.

In December 2009, Citadel filed for bankruptcy protection and emerged about six months later with a far lighter debt load. Citadel’s senior debt position went from $2.1 billion before the bankruptcy to around $760 million immediately after it.

The company also emerged from its Chapter 11 status with a raft of new shareholders, many of whom had bought the company’s debt. The former stockholders were wiped out.

While many companies undergoing a fresh start do so with a new chief executive, Citadel did not. The man who ran the company in the years leading up to its bankruptcy, Farid Suleman, is still the C.E.O. And he has become a lightning rod for shareholder criticism.

Having been given a second shot at running Citadel, you might think that Mr. Suleman would be more responsive to the company’s owners. But four of his largest shareholders say he is not, contending that he is hard to reach and that he does not return their calls.

Read more here.

Listeners Worry For Radio Anchor's Health

WFLA's Martin Giles has trouble speaking on air

UPDATE 4/11/11  Listeners were happy to hear Martin return to WFLA's air April 11, 2011.

Fans listening to WFLA-AM 970's AM Tampa Bay show Friday morning heard a troubling moment, which left some people concerned about the health of news anchor Martin Giles, according to a story at tampabay.com.

The problem surfaced about 8:30 a.m. when Giles, 74, repeatedly stumbled over words in a news break, and seemed to have trouble speaking. After struggling to pronounce relatively simple words, he called for a commercial break.

Once the promotional messages concluded, Giles tried again to read copy on the air but his problem seemed worse. He struggled to form words that made sense, eventually giving up and saying, "Let's move on."

AM Tampa Bay co-host Tedd Webb began reading another promotional message as listeners could hear voices in the background talking.

Since then, some people who heard the broadcast have e-mailed the St. Petersburg Times asking if Giles had a stroke. But there are other medical conditions that can mimic the symptoms; as of press time, Giles' family had not made any official statements about his health or the incident on Friday.

"Out of respect for Martin's privacy, I really can't say anything about what happened," said Steve Versnick, program director at WFLA
Read more here.

The Hits Keep Coming

Commentary: Social-media stars are advertising’s new darlings

From Larry Kramer, Marketwatch.comRead more here.

It’s a time-honored tradition for companies to hire stars and celebrities as spokespersons for their products.

General Electric Co. had Ronald Reagan host the GE Theater on TV. Hanesbrands Inc. featured Joe Namath trying on a pair of panty hose; Chrysler had Ricardo Montalban talk about “Corinthian leather.”

Brooke Shields put Calvin Klein jeans on the map, and James Earl Jones announced the call letters for CNN. Nike Inc. used Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods to endorse shoes and clothing. Nestle SA’s  Nespresso shows George Clooney drinking its coffee.

But today the world is changing. While actors and athletes are still being hired, many companies are going after a new breed of endorser. The rise of the Internet and particularly YouTube has resulted in a new breed of star, the unknown talent that captures our imagination with a short but clever, funny or poignant video.

Meet the new faces of advertising.

These are our people. They aren’t rich or famous, but they captivate us with their ability to tell a story in short-form clips. They call themselves names like “Smosh,” “Katers17” and “MysteryGuitarMan,”(pictured) and are often the people who make social media interesting and fun. Between just those three, they probably have accounted for almost 1 billion video viewings over the past few years. They can garner a million page views a day.

Many of them work with an interesting, small but bicoastal company called Hitviews, which serves as both a talent agency for dozens of online stars and talent “finder” for traditional brands and their ad agencies. Hitviews is a great example of a business that couldn’t have existed until the last few years, but could grow rapidly as brand advertisers begin to understand the growing power of the medium.

The company was founded in 2007 by media consultant Walter Sabo — a former radio executive who has run radio networks and stations for ABC and NBC, as well as worked for Sirius XM Radio Inc.  and Clear Channel — along with his partner, Caitlin Hill, an Australian woman who created Web videos under the name “Thehill88.” They got funding from some of Sabo’s friends from his long broadcasting career, including network-TV executives Fred Silverman and Ed Hersh, advertising guru Jack Myers and others.

Advertisers Back Away From 'Skins'

Fast-food chain Taco Bell Corp. is pulling its ads from "Skins," the new MTV show that has kicked up a furor over racy scenes involving underage actors.
According to an articvle by Emily Steel and Sam Schechner at wsj.com, other marketers are distancing themselves from the show. General Motors Co. also said it is backing out of the show, after ads for its Chevrolet brand mistakenly ran during the premiere. Tax preparation firm H&R Block Inc. said it was taking steps to make sure its ads won't run during the show after an ad for the firm ran "inadvertently" as part of a rotation, said H&R Block spokeswoman Kate O'Neill Rauber.

Viacom Inc.'s MTV debuted "Skins" last Monday, prompting a barrage of attacks from the Parents Television Council, which criticized the sexual content of the show and depictions of drug and alcohol use involving minors. "We've decided that the show is not a fit for our brand and have moved our advertising to other MTV programming," said Taco Bell spokesman Rob Poetsch.

GM spokeswoman Ryndee Carney said that Chevrolet ads appeared during the show on Jan. 17 by "mistake."

"We let MTV know prior to the show airing that we did not want to advertise on the show. It is on our 'do-not-buy media list.' MTV made a mistake and aired two of our spots, even though it is on our do-not-buy list," Ms. Carney said. "We clearly did not want to advertise on the show."

GM advertises on other MTV programs but Ms. Carney said the content of "Skins" does not "fit with our brand image."

Read more here.

Also read here:

That uproar over 'Skins': A blessing for the show (kansascity.com)

'Skins' star Sofia Black-D'Elia defends MTV show's depiction of teens (NYdailynews.com)

Broadcasters Understand Audiences, Not Communities

From Radio Intelligence:

The biggest problem broadcasters have with their digital assets is that they view these assets as extensions of radio brands which function in a similar fashion.  That is, they mistakenly think the purpose of their digital assets is to attract an audience.

While that will be one purpose it should not be the only one or even the most important one.

But doesn’t it then make sense that page views and uniques are easily the most common metrics used to bonus the performance of radio program directors?  They are being incentivized not to build community but to draw a passive one-way audience!

No wonder it’s not working.  No wonder there’s no community.

This explains why we “push” audiences to the website – because the site is incapable of “pulling” them.

This explains why we have “databases” of listeners rather than “communities” of fans.

This explains why there’s so little opportunity to comment and share station content on our sites – and why so little of it is worth commenting about and sharing with others.

This explains why the average station hasn’t even bothered to create a Facebook landing page aimed at motivating “likes” (i.e., ongoing relationships).

Read more here.

Opinion: America Needs Rush, Glen, Sarah, Fox News

If Rush, Glenn, Sarah, and Fox News weren’t around, middle-of-the-roaders, independents, and progressives wouldn’t know what the crazies on the right were saying, they would have nothing to compare their political thinking and reasoning to. They wouldn’t know if they were smart and rational unless they could compare and contrast to the dumb and irrational.

Let’s face it, Rush, Glenn, Sarah, and the Fox News crew aren’t journalists, political strategists, or deep thinkers, they are entertainers. They are trying to make a buck by pleasing an audience that likes their form of vaudeville.

I mean, consistently, among the highest rated regular programs on cable is WWE Wrestling. Yes, there are people who believe professional wrestling isn’t highly scripted, that it’s real – many of the same people who believe that Rush Limbaugh’s ideas are real and rational. WWE Wrestling is pure entertainment, as evidenced by the fact that on the program guides and rating results it is listed as WEE Entertainment.


The highest rated program on cable’s MTV is the reality show “Jersey Shore,” which many people believe isn’t highly scripted, that it’s real – many of the same people, I suspect, who think Sarah Palin is a smart cookie with good, rational ideas.


The motto of these conservative entertainers and entertainment programs are KISS, “keep it simple, stupid.”


They know that if they spout complex, nuanced ideas that their audience will scratch their heads and turn back to pro wrestling.


If Glenn and Sarah’s ratings continue to plummet, perhaps these entertainers will resort to mud wrestling and watch the TV ratings soar. If I were WWE Entertainment, I’d pay them more than Fox News to get down in the mud and wrestle with each other.

Read more here.

Olbermann’s MSNBC Exit Weeks in the Making

On Thursday, NBC’s news division staged an elaborate presentation for advertisers, seeking to sell commercial time in NBC’s news programs over the next year. All the members of MSNBC’s prime-time lineup spoke at the lunch with one exception: Keith Olbermann, the network’s biggest star, according to Bill Carter in the Media Decoder blog at nytimes.com.

For the last several weeks, Olbermann and the network have been in negotiations to end his successful run on MSNBC, according to executives involved in the talks who requested anonymity because the talks were confidential. The deal was completed on Friday, and Olbermann made the announcement on his final “Countdown” hours later.

Friday’s separation agreement between MSNBC and Olbermann includes restrictions on when he can next lead a television show and when he can give interviews about the decision to end his association with the news channel.

The executives involved in the discussions confirmed that the deal carries limitations for Olbermann in terms of when he can next work on television, though he will be able to take a job in radio or on any forum on the Internet. The deal also prohibits the host from commenting publicly on the deal, the executives confirmed.

The decision was completed one year to the day from the last time NBC decided to end a relationship with an on-air star: Conan O’Brien. O’Brien agreed in the deal not to start up a new television show for nine months, and not to grant interviews for five months. The executives involved in the discussions with Mr. Olbermann said his agreement was not dissimilar to O’Brien’s.

Read more here.

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